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 2012 Awardee
Anders Lönneborg, PhD
Anders Lönneborg, PhD, received his degree in molecular plant physiology from the University of Umeå, Sweden in 1986. After a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular plant biology at Michigan State University under the mentorship of Professor Chris Somerville, and working as a Research Scientist at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and later as a Senior Scientist at the Norwegian Forest Research Institute, Dr. Lönneborg was acknowledged competence as professor in 1995. In 1998 he founded, together with Dr. Praveen Sharma, the company DiaGenic. From the start, Dr. Lönneborg has been the Research Director of DiaGenic and between 2003 and 2007 served as the company’s CEO. The focus of DiaGenic has always been to develop blood tests based on gene expression to aid the diagnosis of important diseases, primarily neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The company is now also aiming to develop companion diagnostics and biomarkers to aid the development of novel treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
Importance of Published Article
The team behind the paper “A Novel Blood Test for the Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease" (J Alzheimers Dis 23, 121-129, 2011), including Dr. Lönneborg, investigated the diagnostic value of a 96-gene expression array for detection of early AD. A disease classification algorithm was developed and was validated in two steps using an independent initial test set and another second test set. A similar accuracy (72%), sensitivity (72%) and specificity (71%) were achieved both in the initial analysis and in the two independent test sets. When compared with available CSF biomarker data high agreement (80%) was found. Although further studies are needed to confirm these findings they suggest that the gene expression test using a convenient blood sample can aid the diagnosis of mild to moderate AD.
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Each year, the Associate Editors of the journal select the best article from the previous year's volumes. The awardee is presented the Alzheimer Medal, a 3" bronze medal with the likeness of Alois Alzheimer.